Apartment Living

Overall, I love the ease of living in an apartment. Something breaks - I call my landlord. No lawns to mow, no repairs to make. But there are definite disadvantages. Like getting our new couch home only to discover that it doesn't fit through the front door. So discouraging. That's all I can say about it right now - the feelings are too raw. Thanks to Jon, Jeff, and Carlos for all the work they did to try to get it in, though.

Still, there are good things about our little community. A professional fireworks display on the 4th of July is one of them. We set up our chairs right outside our front door and enjoyed a show that could rival the local city displays.

Funny little story about the chairs. The morning of the 4th, my dad and I were working on cleaning things out of my grandparents' condo to move to our apartment. I noticed a pair of camp chairs in the back of my mom's van - really cute ones with a Hawaiian print. I didn't think anything of them. I thought they were hers and that she was just keeping them in the van for convenience. That night when she showed up for the fireworks, I met her at her van to remind her to pull her chairs out so she would have a place to sit as we were short one chair. She said, "What chairs?," and acted like she didn't know what I was talking about. So I said, "You know, the orange Hawaiian-print camp chairs in the back of your van." She got this funny look on her face and then proceeded to tell me how she had gotten those for me and Jon and I wasn't supposed to see them yet because she was going to give them to me at my shower. Whoops!!! She went ahead and gave them to us that night and they were very comfortable. Thanks, Mom!

A Picture Timeline And A New Place

So many things to catch up, so little time. Where do I start? Here's a quick timeline of the last few weeks.

June 7-13 - Hawaii. We got married.

June 17 - Father's Day. My sister-in-law's father died.

June 18 - Dinner with Matt & Vicki. A night in the emergency room. And these two events are actually totally unrelated to each other.

June 21-23 - In Chicago for Chrissy's wedding. Driving through the night is not fun.

June 29 - Jon got bit by a brown recluse spider. Another couple of hours at urgent care. We found the culprit dead in our bed. The circle on Jon's leg indicates how big the bite was when he first noticed it, probably a couple of hours after being bitten. This picture was taken Friday night. The bite continued to get bigger through the first part of the week until it covered most of the inside of Jon's thigh and knee.

June 30 - The Big Move. The pictures below are, sadly, before and after shots of the same room.

July 2 - We bought furniture. This means that in a few days we will have somewhere to sit other than our bed or the floor.
A New Town

Jon and I moved into our first apartment on Saturday. We're living in a very strange place, a kind of city within a city. It's a planned community based on the concept of Seaside, FL, which you'll recognize as the filming location for the movie The Truman Show. I feel like I live on a college campus. I'm sitting outside the supermarket picking up on the wi-fi signal from the cafe across the street and a group of people just rode by on Segways. (By the way, the market closes at 8. As my preferred time to grocery shop is after 10 p.m., I expect to have an empty refrigerator from now on.) Everyone says hi and waves. You have to walk to a post office (much like CPO) to get your mail. I think the intent was to encourage residents to walk there but almost everyone stops by in their cars on their way to or from somewhere else. It's a neat little area even if it is a bit Stepfordish, and to someone accustomed to urban living, I appreciate being able to walk down the street to get a sandwich or a cup of coffee or to wander through a neighborhood festival. I just have to remember to do it before 8.

By the way, we've decided on a place for the luau. It will be right here in New Town, just a block from our apartment and across the street from where we had our first date just 50 short weeks ago.

A Productive Day

This was a good day. Productive in many ways, both small - I got my first french manicure in honor of Robbie and Jenni's wedding and Jon bought dress actual dress shoes (after a lengthy phone conversation about why he could not wear flipflops) - and large - I bought a pretty white dress to wear in Hawaii and, oh yeah, we signed a lease. We're on a roll. Earlier this week we set a day for for our luau. Now all we need is an officiant, photographer, and beach and we'll be all set.

Oh, that reminds me. The dress I bought back in December is for sale. It's beautiful and I'm sad not to use it but it was just not right for the beach. If anyone is looking for a brand new, very unique wedding dress at a reasonable price, leave me a comment. Or if I get a chance, I'll try to post some pictures in the next week.

Side story. While I vetoed flipflops for Saturday (although they are absolutely acceptable at my own wedding), Jon was seriously considering wearing sneakers, with my blessing. All of the groomsmen are wearing black Chuck Taylor All Stars. The groomsmen, ushers, dads, and 7-month-old son of one of the bridesmaids (baby sized Chucks are the cutest things ever) are all wearing them with their tuxes. And the bride and the groom are joining in the fun also with customized leather versions, white for her and black for him, monogrammed on the back with "Wife" and "Husband." I cannot wait to see my dad in Chucks. (Jon is telling me right now that he still wants to wear flipflops. He's telling me I don't love him because I won't let him wear flipflops. Um. Hey. You're wearing them at your own wedding!!!!!! In 2 weeks. Be extremely grateful. I am the best bride ever.)

The countdown for Robbie & Jenni is 42 hours. I. am. so. excited.

Outside the new place. It was also the first time I signed my new name on any sort of official document. It took about 3 minutes to get through all the letters.

Our place. We're the 2nd and 3rd floors to the left of the door.

When you realize you've been away too long...

Before I get too far into this thing, let me say that I'm not entirely sure I'm going to be successful in managing to post an actual message on the correct blog for all my girlies to read. Fingers crossed, eh...



Spring break started this weekend, so I decided to troll through my various e-mail accounts and see what I'd been missing. I sort of figured that jo hadn't gotten married since Kelly hadn't called me yet, but I was not, in any way, prepared to see that jo's robbie's testicles had turned on him in such a vicious manner. That's no way to treat your host, testicle cells, not nice at all. I was, however, quite happy to hear that of all the cancers one might be subjected too, this one does have about as good a prognosis as you can hope for. All my thoughts and prayers are with Rob, and I can't wait to hear good reports this spring!



Kelly, I am extremely jealous that I did not get to spend time with you and the cougar in Colorado. But it sounds like you survived and made it down the slopes with style and grace.



Megan, I cannot even believe you are going to start homeschooling...you will forever have my admiration.



Sars, I'm glad Sophie is indeed your girl, but I am worried about the prospect of your home forever containing two smelly finger blankets. David is screwed.



As for Christa and I, we are in the midst of moving from the Waller house to a house in Houston and a lovely efficiency apt in College Station for Kristy. The timing worked out really well and hopefully by mid-late April, we'll be settled in our various locales. I'm hoping to be able to go home to Houston most weekends, but I'm pretty sure Christa will be taking her fair share of trips to Aggieland over the next year or so. Let me see if I can add an image or two here...

So if this worked, you can see the front of the house, the living room into the dining room, and the kitchen. It's totally cute and it's IN THE CITY! No more waller times for kristy!

Waller...you know, it's quite a little town. There's a pretty famous artist, Daniel Johnson, who lives here with his parents. There's a movie all about him, but I haven't seen it. He draws things like ducks with three eyes and stuff like that. And then today, Christa and I watched a show titled, "My husband has three wives" about a lovely family in Waller, TX. When the first wife married the man many years ago, he told her that he could not be monogamous, so she decided that she could deal with the affair that she figured he would have. But instead of having an affair, he brought home another wife. Unfortuntately for him, the two wives did not get along with wife #3 and they kicked her out. I'm hoping to see these folks at dinner tonight at our local mexican food restaurant, a place I know they frequent because of the show. Here's hoping!

In any case, that's the basic update. I miss you all so much and do want to be better about blogging. How else am I going to find out about the significant happenings in the Clark family?!

Talk to you all soon!

-KK